Adirondack Traditional Music : The Marjorie Lansing Porter Collection of Folk Songs and Ballads

Driving a black Studebaker with a distinctive red interior, former journalist Marjorie Lansing Porter crisscrossed the Adirondack Mountains and the Champlain Valley, visiting small hamlets, farmhouses, and Grange halls to record the songs and stories of those who lived and worked in the mountains.

In Adirondack Traditional Music, Lee Knight brings to light the extensive, previously unpublished collection of more than 250 examples of folk music that Porter gathered beginning in 1942. Porter’s work offers a rare glimpse into the diverse musical traditions of the region, documenting everything from the drum-accompanied Haudenosaunee chants of Ray Fadden to the ballads sung by Grandma Delorme in her rocking chair, along with English-Scottish ballads, French-Canadian folk songs, and songs from the lumber woods and iron mines.

Editor Lee Knight brings Porter’s significant yet overlooked contribution to American folk music into focus with an extensive introduction and annotations that help contextualize the collection for modern audiences, emphasizing its importance to the Adirondack region and to the wider field of American folk music.